A medical degree in 3-1/2 years? This could soon be a reality with the health ministry and Medical Council of India (MCI) planning a shorter medical degree for rural students who would exclusively serve the rural populace. The hinterland, where few doctors want to serve, could soon have a dedicated corps of medical practitioners drawn from among students raised in rural areas. After incentives failed to lure doctors to practise...

We need to recognise that there is no intellectual democracy; elitism in science is inevitable and needs to be promoted.  The Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman had famously said, ‘the difficulty with science is often not with the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones. A certain amount of irreverence is essential for creative pursuit in science.’ The first grand challenge before Indian science is that of building some irreverence. Our...

HAS GREEN REVOLUTION FAILED INDIA'S POOR? Green Revolution Vs Rain-fed Farming OVERVIEW: Of late India’s fabled Green Revolution has come under severe attack. Many development thinkers believe that it has unfairly skewed India’s agriculture policy in favour of the farmers whose land is already or potentially covered under irrigation. The basic criticism is that the Green Revolution has been largely irrelevant for India’s 60 per cent cultivable land which is un-irrigated. These...

The Central Information Commission has ordered the IITs to disclose most details of candidates who sat the 2009 entrance examination, rejecting the institutes’ argument that revealing candidates’ names would be a breach of their privacy. India’s apex watchdog for the Right to Information Act has ordered the IITs to reveal the names, addresses, pin codes and marks of all students who appeared in the Joint Entrance Examination this year. In its November...

Govt can help by raising public spending on healthcare The Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance, which represents a large section of the country’s pharmaceutical companies, has taken the rather unusual step of asking the government to come to the aid of the industry, which has seen a string of foreign acquisitions of Indian players. None of these acquisitions is hostile. So, where does the government come in, particularly when there is no...